Fvwm-themes and ArchWD

General The tavern
1

I have kept a similar poll at Usercb, to have an idea of popularity of Fvwm. Asked myself why Fvwm is low.
user-contributions.org/home/inde … ults&id=15

I am concluding the seemingly difficult configurations, is holding users away. Also many are eye oriented. When seeing the old screen shoots or the default install, there is no beauty. But beauty is not the main factor. The default install of blackbox/fluxbox is also not a “beauty queen”. :wink:

I think popularity depends how Fvwm is presented.
The truth is, its very simple to configure when configuring in similar style as in “FVWM Beginners Guide” and ver. 2.5.x gives scope for beautiful layouts. From my experiments, also heard from others, Fvwm can do everything what other WMs do. So, what’s missing?

Fvwm doean’t teach/provide the basic configure knowledge to the new users. When browsing Internet, not much is available in this regard except “FVWM Beginners Guide” and the word “beginners” pulls the user off when feeling its too elementary. Its expected to jump into an advance knowledge when installing Fvwm-themes, Fvwm-crystall or downloading ready made configs. I believe, here users get stucked when not knowing how to continue without the basic knowledge.

As an example, Arch Linux is for advance users and the principle is not to spoon-feed new users but asking them to learn by reading docs and wiki, or browse the net. There is no GUIs making configs but are done manually for the sake of learning and keep things simple.

My suggestion here, is to provide more site where users can lean about Fvwm and provide simple but beautiful configs to begin.

In this regard, the configs (packages) I am making in ArchWD-FVWM are all based on similar simplicity found in Fvwm Beginners Guide with the exception of more easier when one config is one feature only.
user-contributions.org/projects/ … rchwd-fvwm

The project is still new, so I don’t know if this the right approach to increase the popularity.

[color=red]Edited by theBlackDragon:
→ split from this thread[/color].

2

Look on these forums – in this thread in particular for my
posts on this matter – but more importantly at the thread:
“Lowering the barrier for FVWM users”.

Who cares about popularity? It’s not something you can
qualitate as an effective measure for usership anyway. This
is one reason why I dislike polls – they might give you a
number, but that number is limited only to the people that:
a) read the poll in the first place, and b) Currently use
FVWM. Furthermore, what a poll generally doesn’t give you an
indication of, is the reasons why person X uses
$WINDOWMANAGER. This to me is far more useful as an
indicator. And it’s something I have discussed to death on
these forums, and elsewhere.

It does – it just requires a lot of time to gather the
basics. Why do you think fvwm-themes was written? As I have
said before, fvwm-themes is an underlooked resource, that is a
shining becon on how FVWM ought to be configured properly.
I don’t mean in terms of aesthetics – that’s subjective. I
meant in terms of style, function use, etc.

But no. People only look at what they see, and disregard the
rest.

Have you somehow managed to turn a blind-eye to the
information contained within these forums?

I’m sorry – but if the overall premise you’re running with
is: “Most people using Arch Linux are elite”, then you’ve
just shot yourself in the foot, and effectively your entire
statement is contrary to what you’re saying. Look at the
number of so-called newbies using Slackware, Debian, and
Gentoo as their first Linux OS.

And my suggestion to you, sir, is that you help my efforts in
getting the wiki up to date. I recall posting to the ArchWD
forums about your intial ideas. They seemed fine – but
you’re reinventing the wheel, and are still not addressing
the underlying cause of all of this: FVWM lacks coherent
and centralised documentation. It wouldn’t matter
tuppence whether there were 5000 configs. But without
anything in terms of explanation, you’re just not going to get
enough people. It’s all very well setting up a site with nice
configs, blah, blah – but where is it people are going to
turn for help? If, as you say, Arch Linux is about showing
people documentation, I’d much rather you started to look at
the wiki, and at my current efforts of recatgegorisation, and
inclusion of new information.

That’s what you can do to help, rather than reinventing the
wheel.

– Thomas Adam

3

I cannot relate to reasons of the linuxquestions.org poll, but to the Usercb. Major voters came from Arch Forums and I know the in and outs what have been discussed. What I said about Fvwm is from the discussions and the poll a mere support.

Here you are giving a valid reason why I said “Fvwm doesn’t teach/provide the basic”. It requires a lot of time. Fvwm-themes is an excellent tool to learn what Fvwm does, but takes lot of effort to study how a particular feature is written when having to go through the whole theme of one presentation. Recently I copied a toolbar from the Blackbox theme, I am here referring to the time I spent.

Similar comments were given by the old timers in Arch Forum before Arch Wiki was uploaded. The forums were overloaded and scattered with information for users to solve their issues.

About the Wiki, is not written by devs but user themselves. In Arch this became a grand success and also solved the documentation shortage what was constantly “demanded” by new users. What was important, the documents became relevant to the users.

If you are relating ArchWD with Fvwm-themes, I am aware. Both does same. But the style of loading configs makes the difference, FT loading one whole theme and AWD one feature at the time. Not to be picky, FT can load a part of the theme as same as AWD all features at one go. Here we may say its a question of taste, but in Arch its a difference in philosophy. Arch prefer freedom of choice, keep it simple, learning, and user-control.

Sorry to relate everything to Arch, its my home ground. :slight_smile:

4

as I am an Fvwm newbie – I am reading this forum for a few weaks becouse there is not better way to learn fvwm. for ex. sticky topics – I would like to say something. Newbies in Fvwm want this Wiki up2date and good enough! I don’t want 10000000 configs which I can’t configure properly. I want lessons step by step to make my own config or to realy_modify someones config. I also need not_ugly basic config of Fvwm 2.5 stable (I wan’t start configuring Fvwm until next stable relese. My personal choice, I don’t now when it will by stable). Things like nice default fvwm.org/ also should be done becouse first impression realy counts… [ … patpi stop, we are talking about Wiki …]

Wiki is something important for me. I wan’t to learn from this resource. Thanks to all for contributting to FvwmWiki

greetings

5

This is one reason why I am wanting to sort the wiki out — it’s not so much how one aspect works over another, as it is the application of
how a function works, for example. In this way, one can begin to build up tranferrable skills.

Fair enough, but I still cannot see how this is any different to fvwm-themes, other than it has had the ArchWD philosophy plastered onto
it.

– Thomas Adam

6

  1. Maintenance → easy to upgrade or fix bugs when each feature (config) is a separate package. With PacTK, package tool, user runs in terminal “pactk -up” and all installed features get upgraded. No need to wait for ArchWD to upgrade.

  2. There are constantly new features available as long as users are contributing. Run “pactk -ip <name -of-package>” and there you have it.

  3. For learning, its easier to study separate independent features (configs) than reading one big config (fvwmrc2) or theme containing from desktop environment to pager to key binding including all settings. Each feature is also divided into two or three sections, style and settings and script. Easy to change color or location or behavior.

  4. Easy to build new packages.

7

I added “Why ArchWD” in Usercb Wiki.
user-contributions.org/wikis/use … Why_ArchWD

8

I know I keep labouring the point – but there is still nothing in any of those bullet-points that you cannot apply to fvwm-themes. I am still puzzled where the advantage it is in using ArchWD. For a start, it’s distro-specific, which is hardly “Freedom of Choice” or “User Control”. I just cannot see any reason for the need to reinvent the wheel in this case. As I was mentioning on IRC only yesterday – it would be of far more benefit for existing configs to possibly converted to use fvwm-themes.

– Thomas Adam

9

When the name was changed to ArchWD to ArchWD-FVWM, now it can be used for any distro. Its depended on the native FVWM libraries and other sources.

At the bottom line it doesn’t matter what is my or your opinion because we see it from a developers point of view. The real feedback comes from the users. From them we will know if it was a “reinvention” or whatever. :wink:
So far those who have tried, have given me a good feedback. That matters giving scope for further developments.

10

Does it work on NetBSD-3.0?

11

For NetBSD and FreeBSD, I don’t know. Most likley not because the package manager requires Bash.
It works for all Linux distros as long as there is xdialog, wget and dependency apps for the development version of FVWM (2.5.14).

Configs requires:
fvwm-devel (fvwm-devel, imagemagick, python, habak, trayer)

Package manager, PacTK, requires:
xdialog (bash)
wget

12

From the recent feedback, the Usercb wiki gave a wrong idea what’s ArchWD when looking at the screenshots. The introduction and “Why ArchWD” was confusing. This is the valuable feedback I was speaking about and only users can provide when commenting what they see not what supposed to be when not knowing what it is.

I changed the pictures, rewrote / edited major parts, and less text on front page.
user-contributions.org/wikis/use … rchWD-FVWM
.